


watching out they don't four-letter

by SafelyCapricious



Series: ain't no grave can hold my body down [23]
Category: Naruto
Genre: ???? - Freeform, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Haruno Sakura, Gen, Haruno Sakura-centric, Not Canon Compliant, Plot, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Time Travel, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:42:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27172618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SafelyCapricious/pseuds/SafelyCapricious
Summary: Sakura doesn’t mean to tell Shisui — but she does.She wants to say it’s because he reminds her of someone — an adult Naruto or Sasuke, maybe, or a Kakashi who doesn’t vanish as soon as she waves at him — but he really doesn’t.Okay, he reminds her a little of Ino — who she’s seen around town as a tiny bean and is just the fucking cutest, Sakura cannot deal with it — but, he doesn’t remind her enough of Ino for her to justify telling him.
Relationships: Haruno Sakura & Hatake Kakashi, Haruno Sakura & Sai, Haruno Sakura & Uchiha Itachi, Haruno Sakura & Uchiha Shisui
Series: ain't no grave can hold my body down [23]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1950148
Comments: 40
Kudos: 563





	watching out they don't four-letter

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Scissor Sisters' I Can't Decide per usual. 
> 
> Day 23 fictober ya'll -- word is villain theoretically. 
> 
> Plot happened. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that. Still no romance though. But maybe soon? Idk idk. This is getting more and more self indulgent tbh. No regrets. 
> 
> Dedicated to the Sakura discord server!
> 
> Enjoy ya'll

Sakura doesn’t _mean_ to tell Shisui — but she does.

She wants to say it’s because he reminds her of someone — an adult Naruto or Sasuke, maybe, or a Kakashi who doesn’t vanish as soon as she waves at him — but he really doesn’t.

Okay, he reminds her a _little_ of Ino — who she’s seen around town as a tiny bean and is just the fucking cutest, Sakura cannot deal with it — but, he doesn’t remind her enough of Ino for her to justify telling him.

It’s an accident.

It goes like this.

He’s the one who guards her the most.

The Uchiha have — after the first few weeks — allowed her into the village proper, so long as she has an ‘escort’ at all times. Which is to say, a guard. And she’s not stupid, she sees the tilt of Fugaku’s shoulders and knows that somehow letting her out is accomplishing _something_ but she’s still not sure what. But he seems pleased, in general, so she must be doing it. Whatever _it_ is.

  
Which is fine. She doesn’t particularly like _him_ , but she knows that Danzo wants the Uchiha eliminated — or rather, she knows that he did in her time-reality-existence — and that’s enough for her to work with the Uchiha.

Besides, Mikoto’s cooking is a gift to the world.

She has an ‘escort’ inside the compound as well, which seems a little more silly to her since the place is literally crawling with Uchiha, but she doesn’t begrudge them their paranoia.

She’s not sure if it’s an insult or a compliment that there’s only one following her around — but either way it’s convenient and Tsunade taught her to never look a gift horse in the mouth. Or was it never look an Uchiha in the eyes? Either way, it makes her life easier and that’s nice.

About a month in, her guard for the day tells her that guarding her is being used as a punishment. She thinks he means for this to embarrass her into behaving better — which tells her that he _really_ has not been paying attention when he’s been guarding her. Because she is _delighted_.

Where she came from — the real world? the future? a parallel dimension? life? — the Uchiha had reached almost mythical reputation.

And she’s — well, maybe not their boogie man, but at least she’s their Tora the Cat mission.

Which is wonderful.

But Shisui is her guard more often than not. She’s unclear if he’s actually volunteering, or if he just gets in trouble a lot more frequently than everyone else.

Either way, they spend a lot of time together.

And so one day, about five months after her release, out in Training Field 3, under a tree, Sakura starts to plot

She doesn’t mean to say anything, but he’s usually loud and he’s being surprisingly quiet. So when she starts counting on her fingers and trying to get her stupid brain to remember when things actually happened, and finds herself muttering about _when_ the Uchiha massacre actually happened and was Sasuke five or six or seven — that maybe catches his attention.

And then, because he catches her hand and doesn’t force eye contact and asks, concerned, what she’s talking about — she tells him.

She tells him _everything_.

***

Shisui has taken to volunteering to be Sakura’s guard as often as he can — Itachi is starting to believe that allowing him to do so might be a mistake. Of course, not very many people have been enjoying the assignment, when it’s given to them, as Sakura seems to comfortably wander around the entire village — occasionally stalk ANBU — and mostly spend time with five year olds.

Admittedly, there is something deeply entertaining about watching Sakura shop in the market with both Sasuke and Naruto attached to her shins like limpets. Or watching Sakura go to lunch with a boy under each arm like bags of potatoes.

But still, Itachi is somewhat worried by Shisui’s interest. He can’t watch over Sakura as much as he might like — for all that she’s there because of him — because he’s busy investigating Danzo as best he can, carrying out his normal duties as clan heir, and taking missions. He does still usually run into Sakura at least once a day, when he’s in the village, somewhere around the compound, however, and Sasuke is almost always with her.

So when Sasuke is pouting over breakfast and tells Itachi that he hasn’t seen Sakura in ‘weeks!’ — which Itachi mentally translates to ‘days’ — he realizes he hasn’t seen her in a while either, and that Shisui was the last one to watch her, and he hasn’t seen him either.

His knock is not perfunctory, for all that Sakura is not actually a guest he does try to respect her privacy — but the loud swearing from Shisui makes him open the door before waiting for a response, because that doesn’t mean anything good.

He’s not sure what he’s expecting — but a whole circle of fuinjutsu around a _child_ who he does not recognize would certainly not make the list.

“Um,” Shisui says, where he’s crouching down with _another_ child and coloring, “This is not what it looks like?”

Itachi steps into the room and shuts the door behind him.

“For fuuuu—“ Sakura seems to catch herself and looks at the grey haired child in the circle who just blinks placidly back at her. “—uuuun’s sake?”

“You can’t make the tiger green, Mr. Shisui,” says the dark haired boy coloring, ignoring the fact that both of the adults are staring at Itachi in the doorway. “Tigers are orange.”

“Right,” Shisui says and pats him absently on the shoulder, “sorry.”

“You were supposed to lock the door when you came back,” Sakura hisses at Shisui. Itachi steps closer to the circle and takes a look at what she’s painted down. Her line work is very sloppy.

“My hands were full! And do you think a locked door would’ve done anything against him? I told you we should’ve found a cave.” Shisui hisses back, even as he swaps out crayons for an orange one and tries to fix his earlier mistake.

“And I told you that there’s a tracking tag on these and the cave would’ve been more suspicious —“ She’s now waving the hand around that’s holding the paintbrush and Itachi steps back to avoid getting splattered, before reaching over and picking up the child in the circle. Nothing is active, but with the poor quality of her work he doesn’t trust the child to be safe.

He does need to figure out who the child is, too, and at this point asking the child in question seems like it’s going to be the best solution, as Sakura and Shisui have descended to trading single word insults. “Who are you?”

The boy blinks and then smiles at him. “Shin.”

“Ah,” he considers and looks to where the other child has stopped coloring, has tensed, and is staring. “And you?”

“Sai.”

“And where are you two from?” he asks. Both of them blink at him and stick out their tongues.

“What are you — give him to me,” Sakura scoops Shin out of his arms and cuddles the child close, scowling at Itachi. Sai relaxes as soon as Sakura has Shin and goes back to coloring. 

“Your fuinjutsu is awful, Sakura,” Itachi says and gets to watch as she bristles even as Shisui starts to laugh.

***

“You have the way to remove a seal, but you aren’t able to do it yourself…and you won’t tell me what the seal does or where it is.” Kakashi is looking at her with no trust in his expression, and it makes her heart hurt.

“Can’t tell you here,” she agrees brightly.

He stares at her — and if she didn’t have a lifetime of facing that flat masked look it might make her quake or break, but she has and it just makes her want to hug him. Which she resists. Because she’s pretty sure he’d Chidori her before she’d get her arms around him. And if she’s going to die for a hug she wants there to actually be a hug involved.

“No.” He says, flatly, and she knows her face falls.

“Oh come on, Kakashi, it’s for a good cause — think of the children!” Which is maybe more than she should say — but then, how likely it is that he has any idea about —

She’s moving out of the way of his grasp without thinking about it, ducking low into his blind spot like she used to during spars and tapping him with a finger for a ‘hit point’ and vanishing in a swirl of petals and coming up a hundred feet down the path and he’s staring at her.

And then he’s striding towards her and she fidgets and holds her ground. “What children?” he demands, once he’s closer, and she holds her hands up to show she means no harm — which, well, if he knew her better he’d know to be concerned about her clapping with force because she’d gotten pretty good at making that shockwave eventually, but he doesn’t know and so it just looks innocent. Probably.

“Ahahaha,” she laughs, nervously — and then she feels like a total dolt and taps her forehead. “I’m not talking about Naruto-kun or Sasuke-kun! I promise, they’re fine! I mean, they’re practicing some kind of mind numbing katas, but that’s good for development or something so they’re probably fine. Unless they’ve gotten into another mud fight. Mikoto might kill them if they do that again.”

****

Kakashi is feeling off balance even before Sakura leads him to an apartment in the middle of the village. She’s not good at subtlety and keeps glancing over her shoulder and kind of skulking — which would make him think less of her skills if she hadn’t moved around him like she’d been doing it her whole life.

She signs like him, even, keeping her pinkies curled on Tiger to move quicker into Boar.

Also she’d mumbled “show him underneath the underneath,” to herself after they turned off the main street.

So he’s fairly sure he’s being led into an ambush, and has a shadow clone lurking nearby to raise the alarm if needed. He’s not sure if it’s more alarming or less the she’s not trying to lead him either into the Uchiha district or out of town.

More, probably.

She glances over both her shoulders before dragging him into the apartment building, and he thinks that maybe her obvious overt paranoia is actually so ridiculous that no one takes it seriously. Is that her plan? Is she secretly a genius at being undercover?

Then she knocks ‘shave and a haircut’ on the apartment door and he decides she’s just not good at undercover or subterfuge.

‘Two bits’ is knocked back before she pushes open the door and she’s pulling him in before he can see the room.

“Fuck! You bit me!” Shisui Uchiha yelps as Kakashi takes in the room. Shisui is holding a dark haired child under his arm, Itachi Uchiha is standing across the way with a light haired child propped against his hip. Across the floor are several scrolls unrolled with fuinjutsu scrawled on them.

“You can’t bite Shisui!” Sakura is already across the room and taking the child from his grip, crouching down with him and pulling her canteen from her hip. “You don’t know where he’s been, Sai, you could make yourself sick. Swish and spit.”

The child dutifully takes a mouthful of water and swishes and spits into a sad plant in the corner.

Shisui splutters, and Kakashi keeps most of his attention on Itachi, who is the bigger threat if she’s somehow got them on her side for whatever weird nefarious purpose she has. “I’m not _dirty_ ,” he protests.

“Besides,” Sakura continues as she runs a hand glowing green with chakra over the child, “it didn’t work, since I assume you were trying to get down, yes?”

“I only had one arm free,” the child confirms mildly, staring over Sakura’s shoulder at Kakashi distrustfully, “and he wasn’t listening.”

“If it happens again you either want to pinch — here, like this,” and she holds out her arm and pinches and twists so hard the skin immediately turns red. And then the skin glows green for a brief second and is just as pale again. “Hard as you can, go ahead and try.”

The boy turns his attention from Kakashi and frowns at Sakura for a moment before reaching out a hand and doing so. She corrects his grip and makes him practice a few more times before grinning, absently healing the marks and standing up.

The boy immediately grabs her hand and smiles wide and fake at Shisui.

“Or,” Sakura continues, “you bite and don’t stop biting until you’ve got a mouthful of blood. It’s hard to convince your body to do it, since we have kinda mental safe guards to keep from biting our own fingers off and stuff, but you can definitely overcome it and I believe in you.”

“Thanks neesan,” the kid says and Kakashi is immediately looking for physical similarities between him and Sakura — but he can’t see any.

Itachi shifts his weight and Kakashi shifts in response, still concerned about whatever is going on here, and more than a little confused. “Did Hatake-san agree to help?”

“He will,” is the absolutely concerning response as she walks closer with the kid and then crouches down. “Sai-kun, can you show Kakashi your tongue? He’s a really great team leader, if kind of a shitty teacher, and he’ll never leave a teammate behind, okay? So we can trust him.”

Sai — presumably — peers up at Kakashi suspiciously before sticking out his tongue. And there’s something dark there and —

“I have a botany problem,” she says, conversationally, as Kakashi glances back at the scrolls and realizes just what she’s trying to do. It’s insane and impossible and — “an evil squirrel — a squirrel villain if you will — keeps stealing little acorns and hiding them in the roots of a tree, but the roots are rotting and the acorns will as well, if they're stuck down there in the roots. I don’t want all of the acorns to rot.”

He tilts his forehead protector up and takes another look at the scrolls on the floor.

“Also, I’ve seen y—someone do this before, so I know it’s possible. I just can’t, you know, draw for sh——shhhingles.” Her grin is bright and her eyes are fierce and he still doesn’t trust her but — but if this _works_ then he can help Tenzo…

“Tell me about what you saw done, before,” he says and crouches down to contemplate the full circle. 

**Author's Note:**

> **THIS WORK NOW HAS A FANART!!!**
> 
> Check out the art by the amazing Momo, [here](https://momotamago.tumblr.com/post/638128064704937984/quick-art-for-safelycapricious-for-her-ao3-fic)!
> 
> Please let me know if you think I should tag for anything I didn't tag for and please let me know if you have any questions. The comments on part one and two gave me life, and made me super happy and motivated to write more. Theoretically some plot resolution coming and maybe some romance? idk what I'm doing, but I'm sure we'll all find out together. 
> 
> Per usual, if you wanna ask me questions or bug me plz come find me on [on my writing tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/capriciouswrites).
> 
> We're in for a long haul of fictober ya'll. 
> 
> Please let me know what you think! 
> 
> Hope everyone is having a day.


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